The rapid integration of generative artificial intelligence (AI) into educational systems has fundamentally altered the landscape of teacher professional development (TPD). While global policy frameworks, such as the EU’s DigComp 3.0, increasingly emphasize "digital agency," these normative visions often collide with the complex realities of classroom practice. The challenge of AI integration is frequently misrecognized as a technical problem of skill acquisition (techne), ignoring the profound ethical and pedagogical uncertainties that teachers must navigate. This study examines how Taiwan’s educators move beyond technical compliance to develop "collective phronesis" that emphasizes a shared, dialogically constructed practical wisdom, and how this collective capacity functions as a critical infrastructure for system resilience.

In Taiwan, the Ministry of Education has launched several initiatives, such as the "Digital Learning Enhancement Project," to bridge the digital divide and promote AI literacy. However, longitudinal engagement with the "Digital Pilot School Initiative" reveals a persistent "implementation gap." While teachers demonstrate growing technical proficiency, they struggle significantly in domains requiring situated professional judgment, such as empowering learners and fostering ethical digital citizenship. This gap suggests that standardized competence frameworks, while necessary, are insufficient for guiding action in the indeterminate zones of AI-mediated pedagogy.

This study posits that sustainable AI integration requires a theoretical shift from individual expertise to collective capacity. Drawing on Aristotelian ethics, we conceptualize phronesis not merely as individual practical wisdom but as a socially constructed professional sensibility. We argue that in the face of rapid technological disruption, individual judgment is fragile; system resilience emerges only when phronesis is collectively constructed, externalized, legitimized, and stabilized through professional communities. TITATI (Teachers in & through AI and Technology Integration), a grassroots cross-school professional learning community established in 2024, provides a distinctive empirical site for examining this process. This community brings together high school teachers nationwide to collaboratively develop AI-integrated lesson plans and share their pedagogical experiences across diverse classroom contexts under the guidance of experienced coaches.

The study asks: How is practical wisdom regarding AI integration socially constructed among teachers, and how does this collective phronesis bridge the gap between abstract policy frameworks and situated practice?

To address this, the analysis focuses on three interrelated dimensions:

1. How do teachers transition from instrumental adoption (techne) to ethical and pedagogical reasoning (phronesis) when engaging with generative AI?

2. Through what dialogical processes does individual tacit judgment transform into shared professional norms within heterogeneous communities?

3. How does collective phronesis act as a mediating mechanism that activates digital competence frameworks (like DigComp 3.0) and fosters organizational adaptability?

Theoretically, the study synthesizes Aristotelian epistemology with sociocultural theories of learning. It challenges the individualistic bias in TPD literature by positioning the "community of practice" not just as a support network, but as an epistemic engine capable of generating new ethical norms. Furthermore, it extends the concept of system readiness (Wang et al., 2020) by identifying collective phronesis as the "missing link" that translates policy readiness into actualized system resilience. Through examining TITATI's dialogical practices, this study reveals how bottom-up professional wisdom negotiates with and revitalizes top-down digital education policies.

Methodologically, this study employs a qualitative case study approach to investigate the developmental trajectory of teacher judgment within the “Digital Seed Teacher Workshop" and the self-organizing "TITATI" (Teachers in & through AI and Technology Integration) cross-school community. The research design is grounded in an interpretivist paradigm, seeking to understand how teachers construct meaning and ethical standards amidst technological uncertainty. The data corpus was collected over a five-month period (2023-2024) and includes multiple qualitative sources to ensure methodological triangulation. Primary data consists of: In-depth Semi-structured Interviews: Conducted with a purposive sample of eight seed teachers, one trainer, and one school principal. These interviews were designed to elicit "thick descriptions" of pedagogical reasoning, exploring not just how teachers use AI, but the ethical dilemmas and judgment processes underlying their decisions. Participant Observation: Long-term observation of the TITATI community's interactions, focusing on how heterogeneous dialogue (across disciplines and school levels) creates "productive friction" that refines collective judgment. SELFIE for TEACHERS Survey: Quantitative data (N=26) based on the DigCompEdu framework serves as a contextual backdrop, helping to situate the qualitative findings within standardized competence domains. The analysis employs Systematic Thematic Analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022). The coding process followed a deductive-inductive iterative cycle. Initially, data were mapped against Aristotelian categories (techne, episteme, phronesis) to identify forms of knowledge. Subsequently, open coding was used to trace the developmental stages of judgment formation. Special attention was paid to "critical incidents"—moments of conflict, uncertainty, or realization—where individual assumptions were challenged and transformed through community dialogue. This analytical approach allows us to trace the micro-processes of "externalization," "legitimation," and "stabilization" through which private wisdom becomes public professional capacity.

The analysis reveals a five-stage developmental trajectory of collective phronesis, offering a new model for understanding teacher growth in the AI era. First, findings indicate a progression from Instrumental Adoption (Stage 1), where judgment is driven by efficiency (techne), to Ethical Awareness (Stage 2) and Contextualized Judgment (Stage 3), where teachers begin to differentiate AI use based on learner developmental needs. Crucially, the study identifies a "Professional Deepening Paradox": contrary to fears of deskilling, effective AI integration requires deeper disciplinary knowledge and pedagogical sophistication to guide the technology, transforming the teacher's role from user to designer. Second, the study illuminates the critical transition from individual to collective capacity (Stages 4 & 5). We find that Dialogical Externalization within heterogeneous communities is the pivotal mechanism. The diversity of the TITATI community (spanning multiple subjects and school levels) created necessary epistemic friction, forcing teachers to articulate tacit assumptions and negotiate shared ethical boundaries. This process leads to Collective Stabilization, where shared heuristics (e.g., "AI as scaffold, not substitute") emerge to guide action without imposing rigid rules. Finally, the results demonstrate that collective phronesis functions as the essential infrastructure for System Resilience. It bridges the "implementation gap" by activating abstract competence frameworks (DigComp 3.0) in situated practice. Teachers empowered by collective wisdom were found to be more capable of navigating ethical gray zones (e.g., algorithmic bias, authenticity in assessment) and leading organizational change. By foregrounding the mechanism of collective phronesis, this study contributes to international discussions on the "human-in-the-loop" aspect of educational AI. It challenges the technocratic view of TPD, arguing that in an age of artificial intelligence, the cultivation of human collective wisdom is the most critical factor for sustainable educational transformation.

Aristotle. (1999). Nicomachean ethics (T. Irwin, Trans.). Hackett Publishing. (Original work published 350 BCE) Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2022). Thematic analysis: A practical guide. SAGE Publications. Wang, T., Olivier, D. F., & Chen, P. (2023). Creating individual and organizational readiness for change: conceptualization of system readiness for change in school education. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 26(6), 1037-1061.